Hold Congress Accountable

Knowledge is power. It makes sure people understand what is happening to their country, and how they can make a difference. FreedomWorks University will give you the tools to understand economics, the workings of government, the history of the American legal system, and the most important debates facing our nation today. Enroll in FreedomWorks University today!

Search FreedomWorks

Resources

Blog

The Summer's Best Fiction: Progressives' Detroit Post Mortem

The kiddies are going back to school all over this great land but it is still officially summertime on the calendar. If you haven't gotten as much beach reading done as you would have liked to, I've got some works of extraordinary fiction for you to peruse, but only if you're a big fan of the fantasy genre.

As we have uncomfortably witnessed the once great city of Detroit descend into Third World status, most objective observers have noticed a direct connection between the half century long dominance of the Big Labor/Democrat machine in the city's governance and its financial ruin.

Then there is the take of the progressive fringe that dominates modern American media and the Democrat party. And nowhere is this detachment from reality more manifest in all its "Get me a bib and my nurse!" glory than in the pages of the New York Times.

After some perfunctory finger-wagging about debt and deficits (something he does in his sleep, and to neighborhood pets who wander by), Professor Paul wandered into a lecture about public pensions, apparently completely unaware that California is still in the US.

What is the conclusion that the former Enron lackey comes to in this drunken Econ 101 class?

So was Detroit just uniquely irresponsible? Again, no. Detroit does seem to have had especially bad governance, but for the most part the city was just an innocent victim of market forces.

Unwittingly, Krugman is closer to the truth than he probably wanted to be. He admits that Detroit was governed badly but this doesn't constitute something unique-true, as this same formula for disaster is being repeated at the state and local levels in Democrat dominated places all over America (again-my home state California or, if you prefer "the seasons", see Illinois).

But ignore all of that bad governance because market forces or something.

Poof-the Democrats are absolved!

Once Krugman gets this kind of ball rolling we can usually expect a reinforcing drumbeat across various media and the Detroit story has been no exception. Most have merely ignored the overwhelming Democrat influence in Detroit but MSNBC's less stable version of Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, managed to blame "Republican parasites" for the city's travails. There were similar predictable "Pay no attention to that donkey behind the curtain" screeds from almost every lefty blog as well.

As always, however, the heavy lifting is being done by the Times. This past weekend, yet another progressive du jour in the Opinion pages teed up a gem titled The Wrong Lesson From Detroit's Bankruptcy. It's more of the same cotton candy progressive political philosophy: a lot of words that they think are making points but are really just filling space.

So much is packed into the dramatic event of Detroit’s fall — the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history — that it’s worth taking a pause to see what it says about our changing economy and society, and what it portends for our future.

Economy, society, fall fashion...anything but the politics of the people who were in power there for 50+ years. It should also be noted that Detroit's tumble into economic oblivion can only be considered a "dramatic event" if you are a progressive who is drinking the hard stuff.

For breakfast.

So what led to all this "drama"?

Failures of national and local policy are by now well known: underinvestment in infrastructure and public services, geographic isolation that has marginalized poor and African-American communities in the Rust Belt, intergenerational poverty that has stymied equality of opportunity and the privileging of moneyed interests (like those of corporate executives and financial services companies) over those of workers.

Here we go into boilerplate far-left territory. Following in the "communism has just never be done right" tradition, progressives will always tell you that government fails only when it doesn't spend enough on this or that (Krugman is especially fond of doing this). Generally, they begin barking "Infrastructure!" or "Education!" like trained seals when the cries for a bigger money train are sent up. As Detroit's teachers were doing rather well for a broke city, it had to be the former. For the moment, anyway.

"Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Give him temporary construction work and you can usually keep him employed just long enough to vote for you in the next election."

There is plenty of complaining about the fact that everything isn't equal for everyone everywhere at once. Yes, in the minds of the far lefties, this is still an achievable thing. And what surely is considered a party foul by the other Times opinion writers, there is some deviation from Krugman.

We didn’t just let the market run its course. We made an active choice to embrace short-term profits and large-scale inefficiency.

So...not market forces? Whatever will we do to get the hive mind buzzing in harmony again?!?!? Return to the mantra, of course, this time in the proper order:

And on the national level, we need policies — investment in education, training and infrastructure

Any discussion of Detroit's problems that doesn't begin with the iron-handed Democrat rule (Coleman Young was mayor for twenty years-that's a machine) and the unhealthy relationship with Big Labor is a pile of disingenuous garbage. Yes, there are regional factors and the changing role of manufacturing in America over the past several decades must be considered but can hardly be given the majority of the blame.

Cities dependent upon a single industry can reinvent themselves in a rather short time if that industry declines. Pittsburgh is less than three hundred miles from Detroit and has done this rather nicely.

Unfortunately, cities that won't admit to what got them in trouble in the first place aren't going to be resurrected any time soon. The people making excuses for them are helping delay any real possibility of a thoughtful, well-planned emergence from the financial ashes.

Welcome to the first Regulatory Review, a project of the FreedomWorks Foundation's Regulatory Action Center. Every two weeks, we'll bring you the best news, articles, videos, and events regarding government regulation. The Trump administration has ushered in historic reform of the accountable, unelected, and bloated federal bureaucracy. When you hear "drain the swamp" or "cut the red tape" or terms like "the 4th branch of government" or "the administrative state," those all refer to what you'll find important information on here. The Regulatory Action Center is committed to lowering the barrier between the regulatory regime and the American people, so check out the links below and be sure to check back every two weeks for the latest Regulatory Review!

FreedomWorks Puts New York Times on Defense Over Political Advocacy
Washington, DC – FreedomWorks launched a social media campaign to bring awareness to the New York Times editorial board’s foray into political advocacy governed by the Federal Election Commission.

As the first round of open enrollment for Obamacare draws to a close, the president and his senior staffers are desperately pitching it to the demographic they most need, often to the exclusion of seemingly weightier matters.

Republicans hate the poor. Why else would they consistently oppose increases to the minimum wage? This is the progressive drumbeat that we have heard year in and year out for as long as anyone can remember, and will continue to hear as Congress tries to push for $10.10 federal minimum wage later this year. But a fallacy can only persist for so long before reality starts to catch up. It’s time to put this talking point to rest once and for all. The myth that higher minimum wages help the poor has finally run its course.

Democracy and Power 103: Government MoneyIn general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. —Voltaire (1764)Politicians transfer money from productive people to favored special interest groups.

I attend Hillsdale College in southern Michigan. It’s a pleasant place, the people are friendly, the landscape of the college is beautiful, and the academic rigor is intellectually stimulating. Some of the things that I’ve learned since becoming a temporary Michigander are that the weather is utterly and truly unpredictable, that Ohio State fans are worst people on earth (their words, not mine), and that native Michiganders insist that “soda” is something you bake with and “pop” is the thing you drink. (They’re wrong.)

A Tuesday profile in the New York Times detailing corporate America’s waning influence on the Republican Party pointed out that “big business leaders have seemed relatively powerless” as Republican leaders struggle to control small-government conservatives in Congress.